Which was apparently the worst thing anyone could have possibly said at the moment.
“Take him!” the voice—I assumed belonged to Sirhan—roared. “Take the Kalbi boy before he corrupts any more!”
A group of spear bearers rushed at Daniel, who stood at the edge of the porch steps. The lost boys growled and crouched back, ready to lunge at Daniel’s would-be captors. My insides shrieked, knowing a bloody battle was about to erupt in front of us. What would happen to my family? My neighborhood?
“Don’t!” Daniel shouted.
Both the lost boys and the spearmen stopped mid-motion.
Daniel held out his arms out to Sirhan’s men. “I’ll go with them willingly.”
Daniel, no! I thought as two spearmen grabbed Daniel’s arms.
A sharp scream came from my right, and I watched in horror as Ryan jutted over the porch railing and flew at the guards. He swung his stake at the closest spear bearer—the young woman I’d noticed before—hitting her ear with his weapon. She screamed. Blood spurted from her head as she clutched at the side of her face—her ear barely hanging from a flap of skin.
Another guard swung his spear at Ryan’s face, smacking him with the flat side of the silver blade. Ryan’s whimper made me shudder as he fell to the ground. A blistering red burn in the shape of the spearhead welted up on his cheek.
“Stop!” Daniel shouted as the guard went in for a second blow against Ryan. “He’s just a boy.”
The spearmen glared at Ryan, but he dropped his spear at his side—obeying Daniel’s command.
“Don’t anyone else make a move,” Daniel said. “I am Sirhan’s prisoner, and I won’t allow anyone else to get hurt on my part. Not tonight.”
“No.” I jogged down the porch steps. I strode right up to the guards holding Daniel. “No,” I said again. “I’m the one you really want. I’m what you came for.” I tried to bypass two of the spearmen to go straight for the window of the limo, but the guards crossed their spears in front of me, blocking the way. “Take me and let Daniel go,” I shouted at the window of the limousine.
“Let me pass.” I shoved the crossed spears out of my way. One of the guards grabbed my arm so hard it felt like my wrist might break.
“Why would I want a child when I could have the false alpha?” came Sirhan’s voice from the limo window.
“Because I’m the Divine One,” I said. “I’m the one you came here for.”
“Lies. The Divine One is not an infant.”
“I am older than I look,” I said, but I realized that, to someone as old as Sirhan, I probably did look like an infant. “Tell them who I am, Gabriel.”
Gabriel slowly pushed himself up to a standing position against the side of one of the SUVs. “She speaks the truth. I told you the Divine One was a teenage girl.”
The guard holding my wrist gasped and let go.
“Lies and tricks,” Sirhan said. “The Divine One is great and powerful. This tiny imposter should be killed.”
“I am not an imposter.” I didn’t exactly know what being the “Divine One” meant to Sirhan and his pack, but based on what Sirhan said, it seemed as though the very idea of me had grown to mythical proportions.
They expected me to be powerful, and I had to do something to prove to them that I wasn’t lying.
I turned toward the young woman in the green robe. She knelt in the grass, trying to hold her bloody, nearly severed ear in place. She looked like she was only a few years older than I was, but with the Urbat, you really never could tell for sure. I went and knelt next to her. “Are you okay?” I asked.
“Hurts like, you know, someone cut off my ear,” she said, wincing. “Don’t think I can heal this one. But hey, at least I’ll save money on earrings.” She smiled weakly, despite the pain that flashed in her eyes.
I almost laughed, not expecting her to be so … nice. “I can help you,” I said, and cupped my hand over hers and pressed it against her head. Her fingers were warm and slick with blood. I knew I was supposed to draw on my love for someone in order to call on my healing powers, but I’d never met this woman before. We were strangers. Yet at the same time she fascinated me. The only other female Urbat I’d ever met. That made us connected, and I drew on that as I closed my eyes and concentrated my powers into the hand that was clasped over hers. I could feel the heat pulsing and swelling, growing as hot as a flatiron.
She winced and then let out a small cry.
“What is she doing?” one of the spearmen asked—presumably about me. “Get her away!”
One of the guards moved toward us.
“Stop,” Daniel said. “She’s healing your pack mate.”
“Impossible,” Sirhan called from inside the limo. “She can’t possibly be strong enough. Only the most powerful of Urbats can heal others. And nobody can do it alone.”
In my haste, I’d forgotten that it supposedly took two people to channel the healing power into someone else. Yet at the same time, I knew I could do it.
I was doing it.
The heat finally dissipated, and I stood, pulling the young woman up with me. I let go of her hand, and she dropped her own away from her head.
Gasps rippled through the crowd around us.
“Doesn’t even hurt,” the young woman said, prodding her newly healed ear. “I can’t even feel a scar.”
“You see,” Gabriel called toward the limo. “No mere child could do that. Grace is the Divine One.”
A deep, aching fatigue filled my body—the side effect of using my powers to heal someone else. But I tried not to let it show as I walked toward the limo. The spearmen didn’t even try to stop me.
“You know who I am,” I called to Sirhan. “And I know what you want, old man. But I’m not going to give it to you unless you guarantee that Daniel goes free—and that the rest of my pack, my family, go unharmed.”
“Come closer,” Sirhan’s voice beckoned from inside the limo.
I walked slowly but deliberately toward the open window. The first thing I noticed was that the hand I’d seen earlier indeed didn’t look human. It was dark gray and leathery, mottled with short grayish-black hairs. No, it was fur. The fingers were unhumanly long, and looked even longer tipped with sharp, wolflike black claws. The hand was a freakish mix of beast and human.